Keep falling for that old, tired assumption that freefromthoughtblogs can no longer surprise me with its stupidity. This is so thoroughly gob-smacking that my bruised and battered mind refused to apprehend it fully on a first pass, probably as a self-preservation auto-response. It really makes the Prune look like a rocket scientist. I am at an absolute loss as to how a mind could become so degenerate and so immune to well documented reality. This is how a relatively new loser on the FfTB block defines Freethought, en route to earning brownie points by engaging in groupthink pissing on the latest witch of the week, Pat Condell –

Objections to Freethought‘s place in our masthead are among the laziest, glibbest soundbites our critics have, but more than that display a failure to grasp even the term’s most basic history. Freethought is not ‘free thought’ or uninhibited inquiry – to think so boasts the same green literalism as thinking a Friends’ Meeting House is a shared beach hut or that Scotch pancakes contain Scotch – though even if it were, it’s silly and inane to assume one’s critics are automatons or say loose collective viewpoints mean dictatorship. Freethought is a specified tradition, European in the main, whose constituents have by and large been countercultural, radical and leftist, everything Condell and cohorts viscerally despise.

Were it posted anywhere other than FfTB, I would at first assume it was a well crafted Poe designed as flame bait. Depressingly, the cretin appears sincere.

“Freethought is not ‘free thought’ or uninhibited inquiry”

Just read that back to yourselves a few times. Savour its exquisite barnyard aroma.

It beggars belief. I have to wonder precisely what kind of education process is responsible for churning out such a brain dead parrot. Or more importantly, who is responsible for embedding this kind of rote learned tape loop in his mind. Freethoughtblogs has more in common with Pol Pot than The Enlightenement. I have vivisected precisely why FfTB is the antithesis of Freethought previously, and no more needs to be said –

It is a credit to freeze peach that imbeciles like this exist and have blogs. Dining tables, as Barney Frank would put it. But it is a two edged sword. While dingbats like Alex Gabriel provide an endless source of mirth for the few actual Freethinkers that remain, consider the poor kids out there that are making their first lunges to free themselves from religions and cults. The likelihood is that they will do so online, and there is a high probability they will stumble on FfTB. And thus have their minds poisoned by a fresh brew of snake oil that the likes of Gabriel peddle…

This is where the real damage gets done. Do your duty. Save the kids from these charlatans. If you don’t, no one else will.

I admit I have been very lax in my baboonology for the bulk of this year. This is a combination of mostly having better things to do coupled with what I guess can be called cognitive RSI – the gibberish at freefromthoughtblogs and skepchick, for me, is a cumulative toxin and repeat exposure does not allow for immunisation, but rather the nausea has steadily increased to the point that it is now actually painful to see. Nevertheless, I have maintained a reasonable level of awareness of their relentless psychodramatics and 唱板板 via private channels and various news feeds.

It was the latter that pointed me to a link containing the first quote above, which leapt out from the surrounding sea of yet another pernicious, well poisoning, muckraking, pro-baboontumblr page. The statement in itself maligns no one directly – its real repugnance lies in what it expects of the reader. It is perhaps the most succinct précis I have seen to date that represents what, ultimately, is freefromthoughtblogs’ and skepchick’s true mission statement –

“scrutinise and question everything; ‘everything’ of course, does not include us. Us you believe, always and without evidence, for we are faith based organisations. Every time you doubt anything we say, no matter how preposterous, we drown a kitten”. (more…)

“How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can withstand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot withstand satire is false.” — Peter Sloterdijk

I’m going to pull an Ophelia Benson and just do a block text dump, add a line or two and pretend I’m a huge intellectual.

Loading the Language

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis. In thought reform, for instance, the phrase “bourgeois mentality” is used to encompass and critically dismiss ordinarily troublesome concerns like the quest for individual expression, the exploration of alternative ideas, and the search for perspective and balance in political judgments. And in addition to their function as interpretive shortcuts, these cliches become what Richard Weaver has called “ultimate terms”: either “god terms,” representative of ultimate good; or “devil terms,” representative of ultimate evil. In thought reform, “progress,” “progressive,” “liberation,” “proletarian standpoints” and “the dialectic of history” fall into the former category; “capitalist,” “imperialist,” “exploiting classes,” and “bourgeois” (mentality, liberalism, morality, superstition, greed) of course fall into the latter. Totalist language, then, is repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon, prematurely abstract, highly categorical, relentlessly judging, and to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull: in Lionel Trilling’s phrase, “the language of nonthought.” (more…)

“Thanks for the ‘heart surgery’ donations! LOL!!! What a bunch of chumps. But the ribs were delicious”1

Almost certainly. And given the median intellect of the knuckle-draggers that read him, it’s not an issue.

After close to a year of shadowy insinuation about Michael Shermer being some kind of monstrous misogynist and sexual predator, freefromthoughtblogs has now clicked into full gear and is openly demonising him. To the surprise of nobody.

At the time of writing, that article is offline, but the cache copy can be seen here.

This is more of the same quote mined gibberish that Benson barfs up on a daily basis – “context” is evidently a tool of patriarchal oppression which can be dismissed and reality is best defined by the cultural Marxist practice of selective editing and imbuing meaning to what they really said through the filter of guilt by association and social demographic. (more…)